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Abstract
Current sustainability challenges call for strengthening educational efforts and research beyond formal school practice, in the context of Environmental Adult Education (EAE). The study reported here focuses on exploring the profile and practice of Greek environmental adult educators. Based on semi-structured interviews conducted with 11 EAE practitioners working with some of the most prominent Greek environmental NGOs, the study delves into the role of an environmental adult educator. Qualitative content analysis indicated that participants are highly educated professionals from diverse scientific backgrounds, whose careers started as volunteers in the same NGO, or as formal education teachers. Own educational experiences and personal worldviews, the NGO’s mission and professional socialization are reported as important motivational factors to pursue EAE. They draw the profile of a qualified EA educator as combining specialised knowledge, competencies, values and a vision. Their mission is perceived as primarily promoting environmental conservation through indirect action. They endorse mainly the role of co-learner, reflective practitioner and experience facilitator. Structural barriers, such as inadequate funding, multiple duties, and lack of time, seem to undermine their efforts, although educational challenges, such as how to encourage adults to revisit their acquired knowledge or how to overcome lack of interest, stand out as important challenges.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
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Notes on contributors
Costas Gavrilakis
Costas Gavrilakis is an assistant professor and director of the Geographical and Environmental Education Lab in the Department of Primary Education at the University of Ioannina, Greece. His academic and research interests include several dimensions of the theory and practice of environmental and sustainability education, such as student/teachers' ideas about environmental and sustainability issues, school-community collaboration, planning and evaluation of educational programs, and ICTs.
Maria Daskolia
Maria Daskolia is an associate professor and director of the Environmental Education Lab in the Department of Educational Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Her current research interests lie in formal and informal environmental and sustainability education and their synergies with citizen science and environmental humanities, and in narrative inquiry as a research and professional development methodology.
Eirini Blintziou
Eirini Blintziou is a primary education teacher. She holds a MSc in Environmental Education for Sustainability from the Department of Educational Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She is currently a postgraduate student in the field of Linguistics at the University of the Aegean, Greece.